Seriously? And I thought my website was bad… The 5 Safe Points Driver School website is like one giant jumble of stuff (and my simple brain cannot handle that); I feel like someone just threw a whole lot of text and links onto the page, then realized they needed some pictures (and corny ones at that), then walked away... I literally took one look at this homepage and wanted to LEAVE. It’s so dizzying to me that everything is so lumped together. I asked my mom what she thought of this website. She took one look, laughed, and then went back to washing dishes. If a website actually makes you want to go back to washing dishes… well, then it’s definitely not that great of a website.

After the initial shock, I looked at the 5 Safe Points Driving School site more closely. I figured it couldn’t be all that bad on an initial cursory glance… I stand corrected. I will give the site credit for one thing and one thing only; they do make their links easy to pick out, seeing as they’re all in red and explained fairly well. And, I mean, let’s face it. Everyone hates the DMV and hates going there, so I can see how being able to go online to do things rather than going to the actual DMV is extremely appealing to people. But after seeing this website… I’d almost rather wait in line at the DMV.

I thought about what Jakob Nielson talked about in his Alertbox on Usability, concerning learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction. I really don’t understand how you’re supposed to navigate this webpage. I didn’t really get why there were more blue links underneath the pictures and red links; it’s redundant. Some of the misspellings are glaring, like with the “Florida Online Drier” stuff. What is that? Oh, and the gigantic double DMV NOW links? Yeah, those aren’t obnoxious at all… And p.s., what’s with all the white space going on for miles and miles? There’s two minutes of my life I won’t get back after all of that scrolling.

This site sure is memorable, though, I’ll give it that… for being quite horrible.

The biggest problem for me is that I still can’t get over the overall layout for the website. I don’t get why there’s a random sidebar with what seem to be DMV articles about the Virginia area. Are people really interested in that? I ask this because the bulk of the website is dedicated to Driver Improvement courses. So, the majority of people going to this website would want to get in and get out, so to speak, and more concerned about getting their driver’s improvement course info rather than reading random articles. Plus, I’d be mad in the first place when visiting this site. People going to driver improvement most likely got a ticket or points on their license—and after seeing this website, I guarantee they’d be even more angry.